(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates a Software Communications Architecture (SCA)-based system, and more particularly, relates to an application component communication apparatus of an SCA-based system for efficient data communication between SCA-based application components, and a method thereof.
(b) Description of the Related Art
Software Communications Architecture (SCA) is a standard communication software architecture proposed by the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) Joint Program Office (JPO) in the U.S. for improving interaction between communication systems and reducing development and arrangement costs. Such an SCA adopts a real-time operating system (RTOS) and a Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) as middleware, and provides an integration environment for heterogeneous hardware and software. Herein, the CORBA is a standard architecture for distributed object systems. The SCA is not a system-specific standard architecture but is an open system design framework.
An SCA-based system refers to a communication system or a communication apparatus based on such an SCA. For example, a Software Defined Radio (SDR) system adopts the SCA as a software framework standard. In the SCA, when disposing and driving one application, several application components associated with the application are grouped into one package and the package is disposed and driven, or the several application components are separately disposed and driven.
When initially driving an application in a conventional SCA-based system, an application factory parses connection information formed in a transmit port OutPort and a receive port InPort, defined in an extensible Markup Language (XML) file, maps the parsed connection information with an object reference, and establishes a one-directional connection to be used by each of the components during the initial driving stage. Herein, the object reference is a runtime address of a transmit port OutPort and a receive port InPort of each of the components.
Accordingly, each component transmits data by using a transmit port reference (OutPort Object Reference), which is a runtime address of a transmit port (OutPort) connected with another component to be receiving the data such that mutual data communication between the two components can be achieved.
However, when one of the two components is abnormally turned off or replaced with another component, a transmit port object reference and a receive port object reference of the component are changed, and thus all connection information connected to the component are disconnected. When a component attempts to transmit data to a port of a different component or data is written in a wrong memory address, the component can be shut down and this may cause the overall system to be shut down. For example, when an application is embedded in a server system, the server system can be shut down.
An application component communication architecture of the conventional SCA-based system is very complicated to operate due to an increasing number of components, and it has a drawback of affecting severe damage to the overall application by a static port or a static connection of a component of the application when the component is replaced with another component or the component is shut down during operation.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.